Colt 444 | Sun King Brewing Company

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O: not what I expected, and a little underwhelmed. Its a very good, but plain tasting beer. The place I am at, it is offered at a price that is appropriate for an easy drinking session beer - the perfect summation of this offering. Nowhere near the domestics, but I know Sunking puts out some world class brews

(Tomlinson Tap Room). Poured a very nice semi-deep golden color with excellent head and lacing. Very strong sweet scent, very malty, with a tiny bit of spice underneath. An excellent lager beer, with huge malt sweetness and just a slight spicy hop bite at the end; really not sure if it should be labeled malt liquor, but it is a very nice American lager and the name didn't hurt picking a style. Overall it's a great American lager beer, like what the macros brew, but good. Went down quite smoothly.

A- Pours a clear golden straw yellow color. One finger white head shows good retention leaving light spotty lacing on the sides of the glass as it falls back into the beer.

S- Not like a typical malt liquor. This has a smoothness to it that most macro malt liquors seem to forget about. Nice mix between barley and corn grainy adjuncts. Hints of a grassy like hop in the middle. There is a mix between corn and yeast in the ending which smooths out any sort of alcohol that I am smelling.

T- This tastes like what a malt liquor made with care should taste like. The front end of this beer is dominated by the barley and corn adjuncts. The middle of the beer shows a balance starting to go on with light grassy hops showing themselves here and there. Backend once again shows off the corn adjuncts but where there is a normal alcohol bite with almost all other malt liquors this one is smoothed out. Hints of yeast in the very end and this one is done.

M- Light mouthfeel. Carbonation is on par for the beer. Light adjuncts and hints of hops are left on the palate. Aftertaste is light alcohol, corn like adjunct, and hint of grassy hop. Clean flavors throughout with everything well put together. No off flavors were present while drinking this one. Light alcohol drying on the palate with each sip.

O- This is a great tasting malt liquor. A lot smoother than pretty much any other one I ahve tried both micro and macro. This is a star in my book and a flavor anyone who brews this style should shoot for. It was actually refreshing and didn't have a hard alcohol bite to it which I expected.

On draft at the Tomlinson Tap Room in City Market. I was hoping it would be something akin to Dogfish Head's old, exquisite Liquor De Malt, which was stylistically closer to an America Strong than a AML, with barley adjuncted by artisanal Indian corn. Instead, Colt 444 just a straight-up malt liquor, clear and pale as straw, smelling of light hops, medium barley, and heavy adjunct corn.

At first, this was disappointing. About halfway through my pint, I began to appreciate its artistry. Like Dogfishhead (and unlike lesser craft attempts at the style, like Rogue's), Sun King decided to really focus on the beer's adjunct complexities. The result is an exceptionally smooth barley beginning, crisp corn in the middle, and a just the slightest kiss of yeasty alcohol on the backend.

There really isn't anything wrong with traditional malt liquors as a style, imho, other than that most of them aren't well brewed. Mickey's and Olde English are actually pretty darn decent, like beerirer, more sharply flavorful version of American macros. The hops are an afterthought, but the grain complexities provide enough character to carry the beer, and the slightly elevated alcohol content doesn't impart any bad petrol nodes. Colt 444 is basically the same deal, only the backend is dominated by Sun King's world class yeastmanship.